A Tangled Mercy

by Joy Jordan-Lake

  Then another. And still another.

  Kate dropped herself onto the floor. “I’m so sorry. I was so sure.”

  Another floorboard. Still nothing. The next one was stuck, pulling loose with a groan.

  “It’s okay, Scudder. Must have been just wishful thinking on my part. I have to leave in a few minutes anyhow to meet with Botts, so don’t feel like you need to tear up any more of your lovely wor—”

  But then she saw something underneath the board: a flash of yellowed paper.

  Kate and Rose gasped at the same time.

  Scudder bent for a single letter, addressed in broad, looping script to Miss Angelina Grimké. Kate dove for a stack of handwritten pages beside the letter—the pages cut in nineteenth-century fashion on one side but ragged on the other, as if they had been hurriedly wrenched out of a book. Across the middle, they’d been tied with a frayed and faded pink ribbon.

  Squealing like schoolgirls, she and Rose threw their arms around each other as Scudder stood grinning.

  “And here I thought we were wrecking my work for nothing,” he said.

  Grabbing him around the neck, Kate pulled his head to her and planted a kiss at the corner of one eye. “Thank you.”

  Rose arched a silver eyebrow. “We had better aim in my day.”

  “Treasure found, Rose!” Kate spun around, the bundled pages clutched to her chest. “Can you believe it? Where should we start reading?”

  Rose slipped the crumbling letter from its envelope, bits of its brittle edges floating like snow to the floor. “It’s from our Emily, all right. ‘To my dear Nina.’ And it’s dated August 9, year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-two.”

  “Just after the last of the thirty-five hangings. But look at this envelope, Rose. There’s no postage.”

  “So our Emily wrote it but never mailed it.” Rose checked her filigreed watch. “Given that we haven’t an abundance of time at the moment, to say the least, before you need to leave, let us save the letter to read together later and begin by skimming the journal.”

  “Rose, I can’t stand for us not to dig in. Now that we finally might have some answers.”

  “As if I would let you be late to your meeting with Botts, given what you’ve been through to corner that man. This journal has been waiting for nearly two hundred years to be found. It can wait a bit longer to be thoroughly read.”

  She motioned Kate to the piazza. “Scudder, sugar, you too. I made you tear up your own work on this treasure hunt. You may as well enjoy the spoils.” Scudder took a seat at Rose’s left and watched with interest but without speaking.

  Gently, Rose untied the ribbon from the stack of pages Kate held. “You do the honor, my dear. Keep them in order, but skim through for now to see what we have here—and what they contain that might have induced her to mutilate her own diary. I’ve a meeting of the symphony board this afternoon, but we can study them more thoroughly this evening.”

  Donning the white gloves Rose had saved from her young womanhood and offered up for their research—their fingertips were now covered in dust and ink—Kate lifted and turned the delicate pages. “Oh my God, Rose, look at this.” Rose bent her head close to Kate’s. “Emily describes witnessing the hanging of Denmark Vesey.”

  Kate’s left hand went to her chest. “And she refers to more hangings. But she goes dark on details. And she refers to Dinah’s being unwell since the workhouse. And to Dinah’s condition impeding her pace and the baby’s being due any day, but . . .” Kate shook her head. “Look at how her penmanship that was always tidy and regular becomes wild and erratic. It’s like she was finding it hard to record any of it by this time.”

  “For good reason,” Rose mused.

  “And look at this: pages and pages about a Spaniard that she and Nina saw at the Planter’s Hotel.” She and Rose and Scudder exchanged looks. “What do you suppose the point of that was?”

  “We shall read with exceptional care this evening, Katherine, and begin unraveling the mystery at last.” Rose checked her watch again and placed a hand on Kate’s arm, the old woman’s veins like ribbons of blue on lantern-paper skin. “Your time is nearly out, dear. Before you go, you say she witnessed Denmark Vesey’s hanging?”

  Kate flipped back to July 2. “She and Dinah and Nina seem to have been there—though she doesn’t name them. But that’s who it must be. The entry for that day is short—and light on detail. And the penmanship is awful, really hard to make out. But . . .” Kate’s heart thudded as she skimmed the next line. “Rose, listen to this.” She read aloud.

  Have made a decision today. God help us, we cannot go on in this way. Unlike N-, I am not a woman of great courage. But I am faced now with a choice, and I have made my decision—one that would earn me the scorn of my neighbors and the fury of my father. I think, however, that for the first time in my life, I am more concerned with the judgment of Almighty God, who will surely not stand by and watch things as they are here.

  In my small way, I will act.

  Scudder raked a hand through his hair. “What’s she referring to—do you know yet?”

  Exchanging glances, the two women shook their heads. Rose patted the pages in Kate’s hand. “But we know now that we will.”

  Kate’s phone alarm trilled—five minutes until noon. “Oh my God, Rose. Of all times to have to leave. We’ll pick up here tonight, right? Read more if you have to, but no spoilers, okay?” Kissing Rose hurriedly on the cheek, she spun to kiss Scudder on the line of his jaw.

  “Her aim does need some work,” he said to Rose as Kate catapulted herself down the winding staircase and across Meeting Street toward the inn.

  She was elated with their finding under the floorboards today. And nothing Botts could say could spoil that.

  Kate took the stairs to the porch two at a time. This time Percival Botts would have to begin answering questions—including what had happened to her mother’s rings.

  She’d reached the first bend in the wraparound porch when someone raised his voice—Botts, it sounded like—from its opposite side.

  “It’s not your decision to reveal what she wanted no one to know!”

  Guests of the inn, lounging on the porch with their wine and their sweet iced tea, looked up.

  Charging from the porch’s far end came a tall man—strikingly tall—with dark skin and a dark suit jacket over one arm. But even with his face turned away, Kate could see by the set of the jaw that he was angry. He reached the stairs in only a handful of strides.

  “Judge Russell!” Kate called as he passed.

  He paused, his eyes going wide at the sight of her. “Kate.”

  “Are you all right?”

  A pause. “I am not, I may as well tell you.” Something in his face, usually calm and wise, frightened her—something barely contained.

  “Judge, I’m here to see my late father’s attorney. I think you know him.”

  The judge’s color deepened, scarlet flushing over the brown. “Let me suggest, Kate, that you do not attempt to see Botts right now.”

  “But . . . I have an appointment with him. And I’ve waited too long already.”

  “I can assure you that now is not the time.” Striding past her, he muttered something she could not hear.

  Dazed, Kate watched him storm away up Meeting Street.

  Kate found Botts facing the harbor, his back to her, bony shoulders rolled forward as if he were being attacked from the front.

  From one hand dangled a scarf. Delicate and filmy, like the spray of a wave woven somehow into silk.

  Intending to begin with asking about the judge, Kate stopped in her tracks. “My scarf. I left it at Magnolia.”

  Botts’s voice was hardly more than the rasp of rusted iron. “I am returning what is rightfully yours.”

  Drawing beside him, she was surprised at how small and insubstantial this villain from her childhood nightmares seemed today. She asked her question more quietly than she’d planned: “Does that also apply to my
mother’s engagement and wedding rings?”

  His shoulders rounded so far forward his small head appeared to be contracting into a shell, his eyebrows crimping together over the points of his eyes. He thrust her scarf at her. “Those rings are not rightfully yours.”

  “So you stole them.”

  Botts glowered at her. “I took them from the safe-deposit box of which Sarah Grace made me a cosignatory years ago.”

  Kate stared at him. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Who do you think was paying the fees on the box? And how else would the bank have given me access to its contents?”

  “So you did take the rings.”

  “Only as a temporary measure—to keep them from you.”

  “To keep them from me? Her daughter?”

  “Sarah Grace entrusted me with seeing that in the event”—he swallowed—“of her untimely death, the rings would be delivered to their rightful owner.”

  Kate scoffed. “Your client Heyward Drayton, is that it? But since he predeceased her . . .”

  Botts shook his head. “Because I have yet to make good on this particular obligation and”—he paused here, his eyes darting out to the harbor—“personal promise, I cannot discuss the terms or the parties involved. I can only say that you must believe me that it pained Sarah Grace not to leave you the rings. Yet she believed this inclination of hers to leave them elsewhere was the right and the honorable thing to do.”

  Incredulous, Kate studied his face. “Honorable. The word you just chose for my mother. That would be a first.”

  Botts winced, the lines of his face deepened to trenches. He jerked toward Kate. “And you. Dropping her scarf in the mud. As if her memory were nothing.”

  “Her scarf. You knew when I dropped it out at Magnolia that it was hers. That’s why you took it after I dropped it.” Kate stared at him. “Oh my God. You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

  The misery lined into his face deepened now, and she knew she’d guessed right.

  “That’s why all your letters to her—above and beyond the call of legal duty. Your offers to help her with her secrets.” Kate’s tone softened. “Offers she never accepted.”

  “Sarah Grace,” Botts groaned. “I wanted to help you.”

  “You were nervous I would find all those letters of yours. Which I did—only I never saw past what I thought they were—your representing my father and your feeling drawn to my mother and sorry for her like everyone else. But your feelings went deeper than that, didn’t they?”

  Botts’s words were hardly audible now, as if misery and regret were crushing him. “There were things Sarah Grace asked me to do for her. Secrets of hers I’d fight to the death in order to keep.”

  Chapter 39

  1822

  Dinah made no secret of what she wore on her arm.

  The cook, Prue, threw her own shawl over the maid’s shoulders. “Girl, have you lost your mind? One look at that and Mr. Pinckney come down on you like hell on a hot day.”

  But even Prue shrank back when Dinah turned with the full force of her eyes, dark and round and blazing. “Let him.”

  Dinah’s willowy limbs and neck had become skeletal, all sharp angles and lines, the only real curve now at her middle. She threw back her shoulders to make clear the state of her mind—and because her back had not fully healed yet, the cloth of her dress sticking to scabs and still-open sores.

  Emily Pinckney crossed the foyer and hesitated. Dinah saw her glance at the armband but look away. “Dinah, I am not going anywhere near the . . . unpleasantness today. And I am hoping today will be the last of this turmoil in our city.”

  “There will be more hangings. No question on that.”

  Prue’s eyes grew wide at Dinah’s retort—nothing careful or respectful about her tone, not even an attempt at it.

  Emily hovered there on that grand sweep of the entryway stairs. “I think,” she murmured, eyes darting toward her father’s study near the base of the stairs, “that you had better come up with me now. It’s time I changed to go out. And I need to talk with you.”

  Jackson Pinckney’s voice boomed from his study as he emerged into the foyer, his black leather account book open in one hand. “One bayonet addition to each of two dueling pistols. Paid in full in June of this year.” He slammed the book shut. “Though I wish to God I’d waited to pay the blacksmith.” He rounded on Dinah. “As it turns out, I need not have paid a criminal with funds he would use to further his treacherous schemes.”

  He glanced toward his daughter. “I believe it would be helpful for Dinah to witness today’s and all future executions in this city.” With one swift gesture, he ripped the black band from Dinah’s arm. “Let me remind you that in this city, we do not mourn criminals.”

  Dinah did not speak as she walked with Emily Pinckney back from the day’s hangings. Despite her exhaustion, despite the shredded flesh of her back, despite the weight of her condition, her strides were long, rage and disgust fueling her steps. Then, without warning, she stopped. Gazed out at the ships, the harbor, the ocean beyond.

  Eyes on her face, Emily stopped as well.

  Dinah hummed, the notes strung tight with pain. She sang only the first part of one line, low and hoarse: “Ain’t got long . . .”

  “To stay here,” Emily Pinckney finished for her. “The last line of ‘Steal Away.’”

  Dinah did not blink as she met her eye. “Couldn’t have said you knew that.”

  “I see more—and understand more—than you might think.”

  Dinah waited. It sounded very much like a threat. A warning, at least.

  “I know . . .” Emily Pinckney faltered here. “I know you are planning to run. I don’t know how you’re planning to try it.”

  Dinah was surprised to find she felt no fear, not even with this revelation. It changed nothing.

  Regardless, she would try to escape just as she’d planned—just as soon as she’d delivered this weight. She’d surely have been caught even without Emily Pinckney already being suspicious. But it did not matter. If the first attempt failed, she would try again. And again. Until she found her way free or they killed her for trying.

  Bracing herself for the full smack of an accusation, Dinah turned from the harbor to find Emily’s face red-eyed and wet and contorted with God only knew what—spasms of something ferocious and sorrowful both.

  “If you want me to help you somehow,” Emily choked out, “just tell me.”

  A wind blew over the harbor. Dinah’s face—the high cheekbones and the eyes, dark and alive—lifted to meet it.

  The offer of help might be a test—not an offer of help at all.

  But something in Emily’s face looked more like the girl she’d once been, headstrong and determined and a little defiant, playing in the garden with Nina Grimké and Dinah—only her eyes now were bloodshot and flooding.

  “I would like to help,” Emily murmured.

  Dinah drew a breath so deep that her front hurt with the bulge of weight, and her back with her wounds. You could have helped sooner, she wanted to scream. You could have tried to see the world outside all your satin and lace, your big house and balls. You might have stopped him. You chose to be silent. You chose to be blind.

  But Dinah did not speak, those words too ready to come if she opened her mouth. The words past any use now.

  Instead, with effort, Dinah nodded.

  Chapter 40

  2015

  Still trying to process Botts’s ferocious refusal to tell her more of what he was hiding, Kate stood at the harbor’s edge, a stray afternoon breeze sweeping across the water.

  But if Botts would not talk—out of loyalty, Kate had thought, to her father, but maybe as much to her mother—then maybe Judge Russell would. Maybe his feud with the attorney could shed light on what Botts might be hiding and what made him think Sarah Grace’s rings were his to hoard. It was time to pull in more legal help anyway, now that Botts was persisting in stonewalling her.

&
nbsp; The midday late-summer sun was rolling a hot gold over the harbor, the waves swelling and splashing below the seawall. Kate checked her watch: still hours until she and Rose would be meeting again to pore over the newly found portion of journal, since Rose had commitments until evening.

  Kate googled the judge’s work number. No point in bothering Daniel for his father’s contact information if it was right there online. Up came not only the phone number but also the address of his office on Broad Street—like most of the historic district, just a short walk away.

  What could it hurt, after all, to show up in person?

  He’d reacted almost violently to her father’s name: Young lady, I regret to say that your father and I were never friends. But Rose Pinckney came from the same social circles as Kate’s father, and even she had confessed Heyward Drayton was no easy person to please.

  Based on the judge’s son and grandson, who both spoke glowingly of the man, surely he was not as intimidating as he’d seemed at Emanuel. And his animosity toward Botts, a common enemy, made Kate wonder if Judge Russell might not be more in the line of a friend.

  At worst, he’d be out of the office or booked with clients—or annoyed with her, but that was okay.

  Kate speed-walked the blocks to his office on Broad with her shoulders squared, and she swung back her hair as she flung open the door. But there, her confidence left her.

  Judge Russell himself was just turning from having picked up a memo from the receptionist, and at the door’s opening, he glanced back. Seeing Kate, he froze.

  “Judge Russell, I just had a couple of questions I thought you might be able to help with. I apologize for not calling to make an appointment ahead.”

  He met her gaze, then looked out through the front windows onto Broad and opened his mouth to speak. But then fell silent.

  Even the receptionist swung her head back to stare at him now. “Judge?”

  Kate was regretting her decision to come. “You know, I could come back another time.”

  He shook his head. “Actually, Kate, I am the one who owes you an apology.”